marked for his own, and I really think that with due attention to all these plays, one might with tolerable certainty select his gold from the dross of the original writer.”
The examination of the three plays in question appeared duly in the edition. Theobald and Warburton had deemed them spurious. Johnson and Steevens thought otherwise. Farmer did not believe them originally written by Shakspeare; and Malone, after entering thoroughly into the question, arrived at the same conclusion. To do this, however, cost him much study and no slight critical sagacity. Whoever reads his dissertation appended to those plays will see, that not content with ordinary assurance, he enters heart and soul into the work of solving difficulties which had perplexed or mastered men of no small reputation, yet still remained matters of doubt.
He appears to prove that all three plays came originally from other hands. The first our great poet touched but lightly; the second and third he new-modelled, added to, altered, and in part rewrote, rendering such traces of the master as left no doubt of the infusion of his spirit into both. The inquiry extends to nearly fifty closely printed pages; for he had made up his mind not to be repelled or foiled; and that others should be as fully convinced as himself. He thus, among others, satisfied Professor Porson—the least practicable man of his day perhaps—that, in his own words, “he considered the essay on the three parts of Henry the Sixth as one of the most convincing pieces of criticism that he had ever read.”
